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cousin_it comments on How not to move the goalposts - Less Wrong
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The problem seems even worse than that. Suppose I can somehow magically determine the actual C++ ability of any weasel, and hire the first ten I come across that is above some threshold, then someone who doesn't have my magical ability would still (rationally) expect that the average skill among red weasels that I hire is lower than the average skill among blue weasels that I hire. (And I would expect this myself before I started the hiring process.) Similarly if decide to gather some fixed number of candidates and hire the top 10%.
One way Perplexed could be right is if I have the magical ability (or a near perfect test), and I decide to hire only weasels whose C++ ability is exactly X (no higher and no lower), but that seems rather unrealistic. What other situations could produce the result that Perplexed claimed?
Thanks! You could produce Perplexed's claimed outcome by fiat: use your magic detector to hire weasels so that they fit the desired distribution :-) Or you could set the threshold higher for red weasels and get the same result. Both options seem unsatisfactory...